


butcherbird: hide in hollow things

by kiira



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: (petra's backstory mmmmmmm), Gen, abuse cw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 15:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3296165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiira/pseuds/kiira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“oh, natalia,” mother sighs, “how clumsy you’re getting,” and you nod. </p><p>(or how a girl is stripped apart)</p>
            </blockquote>





	butcherbird: hide in hollow things

_you only have to let the soft animal of your body_

_love what it loves._

_tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._

_meanwhile the world goes on._

_-wild geese, mary oliver_

****////

One of your first memories is being four years old and kneeling at the foot of your mother’s chair; listening as she told you everything she’s given up for you (her husband, her life, her hopes) and she tugs your hair tighter as she pulls it into two long snaking braids.

“Say thank you, Natalia,” and she snaps a rubberband around the end of your braid.

“Thank you, mama,” you whisper to your hands and she stands behind you, yanks you to your feet.

“You talk quietly like that, drahoušek, you don’t know who’s going to take advantage of you,” and she smiles like she knows.

/

“Moje dcera,” she says one evening, draped on the edge of the bed, “aren’t you going to be making dinner soon? It’s getting late,” and you slowly pack back up your school notebooks and pencils.

(Once you tried to argue that you had homework and she just looked at you and laughed, saying, “Natalia, my darling, books and learning are not for girls like you”).

You learned to cook when you were eight, (it’s not your mother’s fault, you whisper, think to yourself as you clatter pans, she’s just tired from working all day, and if we didn’t move here, I would still have a father to do all this), and she watches you from the bed, eyes bright and sharp.

“Natalia,” she says between bites of food, “have I told you about how we got here?”

You stare out the window at the night and try to swallow your mouthful of soup, “No, mother,” and she pats your hand softly.

“I was going to be a star, and I gave it all up for you, coming here. Never forget that,” she puts her fist down hard on the table and your soup sloshes over the side of the bowl, spilling onto your school blouse.

“Oh, Natalia,” Mother sighs, “how clumsy you’re getting,” and you nod.

How terribly clumsy you’re getting.

/

When you’re fourteen, you make your very first friend at school. She’s in the year ahead of you, but she sometimes helps you with your math homework and you’ll help her with her biology (books aren’t for girls like you, but Mother, you think, Mother what is a girl like me?)

Mother is usually still out when you get home, so one afternoon Katica trails after you to the tiny apartment you share with your mother.

You bite your lip and ignore the way her eyes soften (pity, sadness) when she sees the way that you’ve never been able to get the mold out of that one corner of the kitchen, the half-finished collection of glass bottles you set up in the one window because you liked the way they caught the light.

(They’re just dirty beer bottles)

(Stupid, Natalia, stupid).

You sit at the kitchen table, and she traces her finger along the deep grooves in the surface, tries to make stupid small talk about the other girls at your school but any talk dies in an hour. She’s left there, looking like she wants to scrub the film of your friendship from her skin and you don’t really cry, not ever, but there’s a strange emptiness in your stomach.

“So, um” Katica says after a stretch of silence, “I’ve um, gotta get home,” and she gathers up her bag and leaves quickly, nodding to your mother who walks in as she escapes.

“Who was that, miláček?” She’s less concerned mother like you read about your books from school and more: interrogation, suspicion, police.

“A girl,” you try and Mother grabs one of your braids and pulls it gently (softly, you are my darling girl, Natalia).

“Try again, myš.”

“No one,” and she nods, drops her coat onto the back of the chair you’re sitting in.

“That’s what I thought, Natalia. That’s what I thought.”

/

(Katica never talks to you again).

No one will ever love you like I will, darling and sometimes you remember that your mother is right.

/

You’re almost eighteen when you meet Milos. He’s tall and dashing and something like the hero out of the movies you used to sneak into before your mother came home.

He holds your hands softly, your head lightly, and traces kisses down the arch of your jaw. (He’s older, won’t tell you just how much, won’t really tell you much of anything.)

“I love you, Natalia,” and you gasp into his kiss.

(When you’re curled in his arms, sometimes maybe you are loved by more than a Mother you can’t look in the eye without feeling disappointment.)

But of course, not everything lovely can last.

/

He hits you for the first time two months after you sleep with him, and you’re sent gasping (reeling) with the pain because boys hit hard. He looks almost horrified at what he’s done, and he gets ice for the bloom of a bruise, and whispers, “I love you, Natalia, god it won’t happen again.”

(It does).

You move into his apartment five months after, and your mother stares at you in fury as you gather together your few belongings and turn on your heel out of her house. (The bruise on your back aches, but your mother’s prying, tearing fingers sting.)

Three blocks away from your old life and two before your new you break down crying on the side of the road (you don’t cry, not really; you sob as if your heart could break).

/

“He’s cheating on you, myš,” and your heart turns to fear. “I told you, I told you no one could love you like me, and look what’s happened.”

You hang up the phone with trembling fingers and wait for Milos to get home.

It only takes ten minutes for you to get all of your things out, for him to hit your jaw (and you run home to your mother because you’re only eighteen and you have nothing left.)

She clicks her tongue when she sees the redness on your face and gets you to sit in a chair, touches you more softly than she ever has when she touches your shoulder.   
“Remember I love you, moje dcera, always remember that.”

You want to scream.

/

Natalia dies that night on the street, her pretty long blonde hair spread out under her like a halo (like a fallen angel) and Petra is born.

Petra: the rock; Petra: the strong. Petra is neither mouse-boned nor moth-souled, she cracks, laughs, sparkles and she never, never cries.

“Petra,” your mother snaps, “you ruin my life twice and you can’t even bother to push my wheelchair so I can see whatever’s so caught your attention?”

“Of course, maminka,” you bow your head.

Of course.

**Author's Note:**

> apologies for (google translate's) czech


End file.
